The skeleton of a woman last seen staying in an apartment with Jon Harrington was stuffed in a Rubbermaid container sealed with duct tape.

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Carolyn Jansen, courtesy Aurora Police Department

The container was found among belongings he left on the back porch of an Aurora home in 2005. He told police the box in which Carolyn Jansen’s bones were found was his, though he said he hadn’t seen her since 2002 and didn’t know what happened to her.

But while Harrington was briefly arrested for investigation of murder, he has never been charged with the crime — and denies any role in her death. Jansen’s murder officially remains unsolved — if it was a murder at all.

The case has exposed a deep disagreement among Arapahoe prosecutors, Aurora police and the county’s coroner. The coroner said he believes Jansen’s death was murder and police officers think there is enough evidence to make a case against Harrington.

Kirk Mitchell is a general assignment reporter at The Denver Post who focuses on criminal justice stories. He began working at the newspaper in 1998, after writing for newspapers in Mesa, Ariz., and Twin Falls, Idaho, and The Associated Press in Salt Lake City. Mitchell first started writing the Cold Case blog in Fall 2007, in part because Colorado has more than 1,400 unsolved homicides.